Navajo Generating Station

In your story "Power Plant Partly Owned by L.A. Implicated in Grand Canyon Haze" (Metro, Oct. 12), you write that a National Academy of Sciences panel "sidestepped the central question" of whether scrubbers ought to be installed at the Navajo Generating Station to protect vistas at the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, you don't tell the reader why. As the one lawyer on the panel, perhaps I can supply the answer. The reason is that the decision of whether to control Navajo Generating Station is not merely a scientific question.

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, working in concert with a number of environmental and energy activists and researchers in Washington and Montana, announced Thursday a new push to get Puget Sound Energy to stop buying power from coal-fired Colstrip Generating Station in Montana. According to EPA rankings, the facility is the eighth most egregious emitter of greenhouse gases among power plants in the U.S. The campaign announced this as a "bold move" in their nationwide push to negotiate closure dates for coal-fired plants, or to get them switched to cleaner-burning natural gas, since PSE is also a leader among utilities in developing wind farms and pushing for greener forms of electrical generation.

When protesters were arrested at the management offices of a huge coal-fired power plant in Arizona in December, it highlighted a very untidy fact about electricity in green-conscious L.A.: about half of it comes from coal. The protests were at the Tempe offices of the Salt River Project, managing partners of the massive Navajo Generating Station, which is a coal-fired power plant. As pointed out in this Alternet piece by Joshua Frank, the city of Los Angeles doesn't own coal-fired power plants, but L.A.'s Department of Water and Power still buys 44% of its power from polluting plants across the state line in Arizona and Utah.

When protesters were arrested at the management offices of a huge coal-fired power plant in Arizona in December, it highlighted a very untidy fact about electricity in green-conscious L.A.: about half of it comes from coal. The protests were at the Tempe offices of the Salt River Project, managing partners of the massive Navajo Generating Station, which is a coal-fired power plant. As pointed out in this Alternet piece by Joshua Frank, the city of Los Angeles doesn't own coal-fired power plants, but L.A.'s Department of Water and Power still buys 44% of its power from polluting plants across the state line in Arizona and Utah.

Where do air pollutants go to "get away from it all?" In Los Angeles, they head for the desert. Researchers from St. Louis, Reno and San Diego have found that industrial chemicals released in the Los Angeles Basin show up in the Nevada and Arizona deserts one to two days later.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday brushed off a suggestion from an Arizona utility regulator that Los Angeles might stop receiving electricity from the state after the City Council voted for a boycott over Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigration. "The mayor stands strongly behind the City Council on this issue, and will not respond to threats from a state which has isolated itself from the America that values freedom, liberty and basic civil rights," the mayor's office said in a statement.

A coal-burning power plant owned in part by the city of Los Angeles was identified by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday as a major source of haze that impairs winter views in the Grand Canyon. The finding ignited a fierce battle in the Bush Administration over whether to require the Arizona plant to install costly cleanup equipment.

After a battle lasting years, the Environmental Protection Agency today will propose a 70% reduction in pollution from a giant power station linked to winter haze that often obscures the scenic vistas of the Grand Canyon, Administration sources said Thursday.

The Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, working in concert with a number of environmental and energy activists and researchers in Washington and Montana, announced Thursday a new push to get Puget Sound Energy to stop buying power from coal-fired Colstrip Generating Station in Montana. According to EPA rankings, the facility is the eighth most egregious emitter of greenhouse gases among power plants in the U.S. The campaign announced this as a "bold move" in their nationwide push to negotiate closure dates for coal-fired plants, or to get them switched to cleaner-burning natural gas, since PSE is also a leader among utilities in developing wind farms and pushing for greener forms of electrical generation.

What value should be put on preserving a breathtaking vision? Four hundred million dollars? How much is it worth to guarantee that the vivid details and bright pastels of magnificent sheer chasm walls don't wash into cold, faded blurs of blue and gray? One billion dollars? How about $1.6 billion? Those are some of the estimates of what it could cost in just the first round of a new, more aggressive, yet fuzzily defined federal assault on dirty air.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday brushed off a suggestion from an Arizona utility regulator that Los Angeles might stop receiving electricity from the state after the City Council voted for a boycott over Arizona's crackdown on illegal immigration. "The mayor stands strongly behind the City Council on this issue, and will not respond to threats from a state which has isolated itself from the America that values freedom, liberty and basic civil rights," the mayor's office said in a statement.

After a battle lasting years, the Environmental Protection Agency today will propose a 70% reduction in pollution from a giant power station linked to winter haze that often obscures the scenic vistas of the Grand Canyon, Administration sources said Thursday.

Where do air pollutants go to "get away from it all?" In Los Angeles, they head for the desert. Researchers from St. Louis, Reno and San Diego have found that industrial chemicals released in the Los Angeles Basin show up in the Nevada and Arizona deserts one to two days later.

In your story "Power Plant Partly Owned by L.A. Implicated in Grand Canyon Haze" (Metro, Oct. 12), you write that a National Academy of Sciences panel "sidestepped the central question" of whether scrubbers ought to be installed at the Navajo Generating Station to protect vistas at the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, you don't tell the reader why. As the one lawyer on the panel, perhaps I can supply the answer. The reason is that the decision of whether to control Navajo Generating Station is not merely a scientific question.

What value should be put on preserving a breathtaking vision? Four hundred million dollars? How much is it worth to guarantee that the vivid details and bright pastels of magnificent sheer chasm walls don't wash into cold, faded blurs of blue and gray? One billion dollars? How about $1.6 billion? Those are some of the estimates of what it could cost in just the first round of a new, more aggressive, yet fuzzily defined federal assault on dirty air.

A coal-burning power plant owned in part by the city of Los Angeles was identified by the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday as a major source of haze that impairs winter views in the Grand Canyon. The finding ignited a fierce battle in the Bush Administration over whether to require the Arizona plant to install costly cleanup equipment.

The Environmental Protection Agency, trying to reduce haze and improve visibility over the Grand Canyon, said today that it will impose stringent pollution controls on a nearby coal-burning electric power plant. The EPA said the proposed action will cut sulfur emissions from the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona by 70%, although officials said they hope that the utility will install equipment that will reduce emissions even further.